


Till the End

by sottovocexo



Category: Agent Carter (TV), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Break Up, F/M, OTP Feels, Peggysous Appreciation Week, Unrequited Love, peggysous
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-29
Packaged: 2020-02-09 11:25:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18637180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sottovocexo/pseuds/sottovocexo
Summary: MAJOR ENDGAME SPOILERS: Before proceeding, be warned that this concerns the very ending of Avengers: Endgame (2019). When Steve returns to Peggy, she knows who to choose. Still, there is another timeline out there where she doesn’t have to make that choice.In other words, making Peggysous fit within the new canon.





	1. PROLOGUE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What’s it gonna be, joy or disaster?/Is it gonna be happy ever after?
> 
> Daniel faces insecurities about Peggy’s past with Steve after they have gotten together.

I took stock of every second with Peggy like it could be my last. Not just because of the dangers we faced. Our evening out to dinner was nice, and quiet too, until she looked up like she could look right through me.

“Why do you look at me like that?” 

I smiled for her, my brow furrowed. “Like what?”

Like I didn’t measure up. Like I couldn’t keep her if I tried. Like she’d never really been mine at all. 

We had history, our few months together spent as a team. Clearing her brother’s name; bringing Dottie Underwood down; and catching Jack’s killer. Then there was our connection: comfortable and steady, like a still sea. But Peggy’s history was a current, and I was always fighting upstream. 

I turned her hand over in mine, holding it tightly, like the night in a surveillance van when I looked up and expected to see the girl on a pedestal pitying me, but instead saw something different in her eyes. She came so close I wondered if I was reading her right. So close, as if she could almost be mine.

“Nothing,” she said, holding my hand to her lips. “Maybe it’s nothing.”

I sighed, the corners of my mouth falling. Maybe I was still fooling myself.


	2. PRESENT

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When you gonna tell the one that you’re hurting?/When will you decide the one you’re deserting?
> 
> Steve returns to live out his life with Peggy. She must break the news to Daniel.

The room felt like a vacuum, as if it'd sucked all the air out and my life with it. Until she rushed in.

“I’m so sorry, my plane was delayed, and I got here as soon as I could,” she said, rattling off details like it was an official report. “Mr. Jarvis was otherwise occupied, you see--”

Running my hand over my mouth, I kept my eyes focused on the Sunday newspaper, center stage on my desk. I flipped it over, turning from today’s racing to the front page. To the announcement of Captain America’s return. 

“Oh, Daniel.” Peggy sat down.

“And here I thought a three-hour difference was like a lifetime. That must be nothing compared to three years...”

“Daniel…”

“I’ve only felt like this once before, you know? When you were working for Howard. When I thought…” I cleared my throat. “Anyway, it hurt because I respected you. I fought for you. But really...I loved you. And it was like something broke inside me because I thought I couldn’t love you anymore.”

“You have to know...I haven’t spent a second of our time wondering what might have been. I’ve only ever thought of what we could be. Together.”

“I fell...too hard, too fast. I know. I--”

“You weren’t the only one,” she said, reaching across the desk, linking our hands atop the newspaper. I hated when she looked like that - like she only had eyes for me. Like Captain America hadn’t come back for her. Like I wasn’t fooling myself.

“Believe it or not, I know what it’s like,” I sighed, sitting upright in my chair. “I know what it’s like when you’ve found someone you love, got this whole timeline planned out… Then that one unexpected person walks back into your life, the one person who could turn it all upside down.”

That’s what it was like when the girl on a pedestal came so close she became real. Became a companion and partner. But she was going back to Captain America, back up on a pedestal, having been real once but never truly mine. 

“In another lifetime, I see all of it. What we could have been together.” Peggy looked down, the light catching the tears in her eyes. “More adventures, more time. A family.”

That was the hardest part. Knowing I wouldn’t be the one in the late nights, the quiet moments. That I’d be missing those kisses in the kitchen and dances at the window. 

“I’ve come close to losing you too many times. But I have to say, I didn’t think this is how it’d happen.” I smiled. For her. 

Peggy laughed. “I’m just as surprised as you. But, Daniel, please know, if I didn’t have--”

“A choice?”

She smiled, but it wasn’t for me. “If I didn’t have a dance...”

“Peggy, it’s okay,” I said, leaning across my desk. “I know when it’s my time to bow out.”

“Everything I wanted for us, I see it clearly. I truly mean it. But not too long ago, I was supposed to meet someone for a dance.” She rose from her chair and picked up the paper, folded it carefully. “And he’s come back for just that.”

“I couldn’t shake you once. Doubt I can do it again,” I said with a sigh. “Just know...I’ve got your back, in this lifetime and every other.”


	3. EPILOGUE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You walk into a room, and nature takes its course./Conquers me my force with no remorse...
> 
> Daniel gets a personal offer to join the newly founded SHIELD.

The hallway was nicer than any other in Hoboken, outfitted in steel and grade-A security as if Howard Stark himself had designed the place. When I got the email with an offer to join a new espionage agency, I thought it couldn’t be real. The details were as secretive as they were sparse: the mention of a director with no name personally requesting my presence and an address that practically had to be cracked by code. I couldn’t even say I was too interested. Until--

“Peggy?” 

Peggy Carter -- the girl on a pedestal -- came down the hall, heels clacking on the steel. She clutched the files in her hand closer to her chest. “I always imagined what you’d look like with some salt and pepper.” She smiled, a few fine lines squinting at the corners of her eyes. “Just as I hoped.”

“What are you doing here? I got an email to speak with--”

“The director of SHIELD? Well, reasoning would have it I’m here to see you then.” She cocked an eyebrow. 

“Peg--that’s amazing. I didn’t know.”

“Please, sit.” She opened the door to an office overlooking the Manhattan skyline. “Daniel, you told me once you were with me till the end. Do you still mean it?”

I meant it then and I’d say so again, same as before. “Of course.”

“You’re a good man who always made the right decisions. Capable, just. Never bound by the golden handcuffs of power. I couldn’t have dreamed up a better agent.”

“Peg, as nice as this is to hear, what does it have to do with the job?”

“I need you, Daniel. I’m assembling our team here at SHIELD, and I want your help to make this what the SSR wasn’t. To make this a good place for good men--and women, of course.”

“Whatever you need, I’m in. I’ve got your back.”

“We’d been a team, Daniel. A wonderful one, remember?” She looked at me like she used to, like I always wanted her to. “I’m glad we get to work together again.”

“Thank you, Peggy.” I took her hand, taking me back to our time in the SSR. “Just promise me this won’t be like California. Or London, for that matter.”

She laughed. “A smart woman doesn’t make promises she can’t keep.”

“Tell me...are you happy?”

She smiled, casting her gaze out the window. “Honestly, I didn’t know I could be so happy.”

“Good… That’s good.”

“And you?” she said, glancing up and down. “Doing well?”

I grinned, pulling a photo from my pocket. “Doing great. First kid’s on the way. A boy.”

The girl on a pedestal came close and held the photo in her hands. So close it was like I could see her in another lifetime. Where it was just me and her.


	4. ALTERNATE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Baby, I assume that you always knew the recipe./It’s simply me and you. 
> 
> During the events of Captain America: Civil War (2016), Daniel gets Peggy situated in her hospital room while she faces Alzheimer’s.

My favorite photo was the one of her holding our son, holding him close, bundled in a thick turtleneck as we’d visited the rest of her family in England. I’d snapped it quickly, catching them in the moment. She’d laughed. “A souvenir from our trip to England?” 

I smiled, remembering. 

The nurse put down the picture, alongside another of Peggy and the kids, two of her favorites right there at her side. The pictures of our kids. The memories of our life. Those were the ones she’d want there. Even if she didn’t quite remember. In all honesty, it felt like another lifetime.

“None of you, sir?” the nurse asked. 

“There’s never any of the photographer,” I said with a laugh. “That’s how it should be. I was never one for pictures.” 

I shouldn’t have outlasted her, not like this. Of all the times I’d nearly lost her, I was still unprepared. I’d take all the suffering from her if I could. I shouldn’t have outlasted her, but she’s kept me sharp all these years. Out of my depths, but sharp.

I took my seat at Peggy’s side, adjusting the photos until they were just right. 

The girl on a pedestal closed her eyes and took my hand, came so close I could see the realities of now and the memories of old. Our history. The first I love yous, said in London while we ran down stuffy streets. “I love you, Daniel,” she’d said, and I couldn’t believe I was hearing it, couldn’t believe she really did. “I—I love you,” I breathed, but not too, because I’d loved her so long it wasn’t just in return. I’d waited so long to say those words. 

The biggest mission, starting SHIELD. “No, no, no, I had nothing to do with it. This was all her,” I’d told Jarvis once operations were up and running. It was always her. I was happy to make her happy, to stay by her side.

The wildest adventure, raising two kids, seeing more grandkids taking our place in the world as we retired into the quiet moments, stepping up as cops, detectives and federal agents. They all got her spunk; some got my calm. 

I saw it all, as if it was bound to happen one way or another in this lifetime and every other. 

“We’re a team,” I told her. Even if she didn’t remember, it was okay. I did. 

“A wonderful one,” she whispered. 

I turned her hand over in mine. “Peggy...I’m in this with you till the end.” 

She smiled, like she’d just heard something a long-ago friend told her once. 

“That’s why I chose you,” she said quietly, surprising me. “You meant it.”

Then and now. In this lifetime and the next.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Just because it’s canon doesn’t mean I have to like it.” - Daniel Sousa, probably 
> 
> It pained me to write this because Peggysous is my perfect OTP and they’re the ones who belong together! There’s a potential I might write more sassy spy couple shenanigans from Peggysous in some future stories (that ignore the new canon). Any you’d like to see?


End file.
